


Five Times Vila Restal Needed A Hug (And One Time He Got One)

by Silikat



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: (But mostly hurt oops), Angst, Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, PGP, Post-Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 07:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10183658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silikat/pseuds/Silikat
Summary: Vila Restal. Thief, conman, reluctant rebel. His life in six snapshots, from the far-gone days of his youth on Earth, to the day that he died - and beyond, to a far-distant moon.Vila had never meant to stumble into a revolution, but here he was; on an alien ship, trying desperately not to get shot under the leadership of a fanatic. As time went on his losses grew, until they were ready to crush them beneath their inexorable weight. But there is always light in the darkness, a desperate something that Vila grasps for. Will he ever find a place to be safe?





	1. A First Time For Everything

**Author's Note:**

> It all started with a tumblr post about being hugged by Vila. 18k words later...
> 
> First B7 fic! I am so nervous about posting this. Any and all feedback, wither here or at my tumblr (of the same name) is incredibly welcome. More detailed notes at the end, but for now: content warning.
> 
> There's a fair amount of canon-typical violence and the consequences of living in a dystopian hellscape, as well as hints of depression, a lot of alcoholism, sort-of-self harm (implicit) and some suicidal ideation. If you are affected by such issues, please be careful reading this. I know I tagged for major character death, but that's no more than there is in the canon - reflected on more, maybe.
> 
> Other than that, enjoy!

Vila laughed as he ran through the streets. There was no reason not to.

The day was bright, his feet were fast, and he was getting away with it. Vila Restal was eight years old, and he was untouchable.

Moments ago, he had been in one of the convenience stores not too far from his apartment. He had stood next to the credits machine, pretending to survey the array of brightly-wrapped chocolates and treats in the cabinet next to it. He had stood there until there were no adults around the machine, then slid in next to it. He had to work quickly, he knew that. It wouldn’t be long until someone glanced over and saw him there. But he had his tools stashed in the inside pocket of his tunic, and he knew enough sleight of hand to slip them out without anyone seeing.

It hadn’t taken him long to crack the side of the machine. His hands were small and thin, and could easily take out a few screws, break a laser field or two. Inside were credits – usually, they were held on little data sticks, but some people still swore by printed money, and there were always machines around to satisfy those people’s whims. He took a stack from the top, not even looking at the numbers printed on the top, and shoved them in his pocket.

Sloppy work, he’d say when he recounted the story in later years. He hadn’t even put the side of the machine back. But he was a kid, and it was his first big job. It could have gone a lot worse, he’d laugh, but the laugh would be dry and humourless.

In the moment, though, Vila didn’t care. He just skidded around a corner, his mind on the bright plastic sheets that were snug in his pocket. It was a lot of credits, he knew that without counting it. More than he’d ever held before. More than he’d ever seen before! Vila’s hands bunched up into balls, his grin splitting his young face. He couldn’t wait to see his mum’s expression when he presented her with this. She’d be so happy.

Vila’s mum was twenty five, but she looked a lot older. Vila knew it, though he’d fight any kid who said it out loud. His mum just worked a lot, that was all. You’d look like that too if you worked three different jobs all day.

(He wouldn’t actually fight the other kids. He learned a long time ago that fighting just ended with him getting the snot kicked out of him by someone bigger and stronger than he was. He liked to settle disputes by bribing the other kid with stuff he’d nicked on the playground that day, and make friends with them as much as he could. That stopped people picking on you, see. You had to prove you were useful.)

Vila didn’t want his mum to work so much, or be so tired. He knew how hard it was for her, and he also knew that he wanted to give her whatever help he could. Because he was eight years old, and eight was nearly nine, and nine was _practically_ ten, and ten was basically a teenager, really. Not old enough to work, but old enough to help. And so Vila did.

He’d always had some small talent for stealing. Most of the Delta kids did. Usually it was little things – sweets from the shop when their parents didn’t have the credits for it, bits and pieces of luxuries whenever it took their fancy. But Vila had set his sights on higher things, and he intended to follow through. He practiced how to pick locks, alone at nights when the electricity was off again and there was nothing better to do. He could get in and out of the apartment without a key in seconds, and thanks to some tools he’s taken from the pocket of one of the weird kids at school, he was learning so much more. Electronic locks were child’s play to him. He was studying for something bigger.

He may have been a kid, but he still noticed that they weren’t doing all that well where money was concerned. They lived in a little one-bedroom apartment, Vila and his mother taking turns to sleep on the couch, with barely enough room for the two of them to coexist. His mother worked a couple of jobs to keep them afloat, which meant that Vila rarely ever saw her. When he left for school in the morning, she was asleep, sometimes in her street clothes after being too exhausted to change for the night. When he returned, she would be gone, and she’d stay gone until well after his bed time most nights. He had the occasional neighbour looking in on him, of course. She made sure that he would never go without someone looking after him, and they basically all knew each other on his block anyway. But he saw how tired she was even in the rare time they could spend together, and he would have done anything to help her out.

When he was younger, he had tried to help her by being happy. If he was smiling all the time, then she wouldn’t know when he was hungry or sad or the other boys had laughed at his patched trousers and too-small shirt. Their neighbour, a nice older man who occasionally looked after Vila named Kel Vastan, called him a ‘cheeky chappie’, and he tried to live up to it. But then he grew up a bit, and saw his mum crying in the bathroom when she thought he was out, and he knew that just being cheerful wouldn’t cut it anymore.

That was when the idea hit him. He had stolen stuff before, why not do it again, but with more? He could take food, clothes, credits; anything, if it meant that his mother didn’t have to work as much and they could actually have nice things for once. He wasn’t exactly planning a grand jewel heist – no, he thought, grinning to himself, not yet anyway. He just wanted to lift a few things to make them comfortable.

There was one obstacle, of course. The guards were everywhere. Federation troops, in their black clothes and shiny helmets, stood on practically every corner, making sure none of the Delta lowlifes got up to much trouble. You didn’t grow up in the Delta areas of the Dome without seeing a few people being hauled off, for legitimate reasons or not. The first one he remembered was when he was shopping with his mother, aged four. They were walking home when they saw the cruiser full of Federation troops speed down the road next to them. His mother had sworn and tugged at his hand, pulling them both into a nearby alley. Vila remembered starting to cry, then, and her hand immediately flying to his mouth to silence him.

“Shush, honey,” she’d told him. “Shush, or they’ll take us too.” There were tears in her wide eyes too, and her hand shook as she removed it from his mouth. They sat there, silent as mice, until the stomping of Federation boots was over and they could breathe again.

He had shut up, that day. He’d swallowed his tears and watched in mute horror as the Federation had stormed one of the apartment blocks, filled with people, and dragged them all out of their homes. They had been lined up on the street, men and women, children and the elderly, and marched off somewhere. Probably to get their brains wiped, Vila had overheard someone saying later. Poor sods. At least it wasn’t us.

It wasn’t an unusual sight. People disappeared all the time. Sometimes they came back, drooling slightly and always calmer than before. Usually they didn’t, and people said no more about it. Most of the time, they just wanted to avoid joining them.

Vila was a cautious kid, it was true. Every kid he knew had developed an instinctive sense of danger, a mental alarm bell that told them when it was safe to carry on and when to scarper. They knew exactly what to say and how to look to keep people off their tail. But Vila was more cautious than that. He had exactly six escape routes planned from his apartment, and thirteen from the school, just in case they came in the middle of the day.

That day, though. Running through the streets with all the riches in the Dome tucked away beneath his faded tunic. Vila laughed, and Vila smiled, and Vila shouted with joy. Because that day, Vila didn’t care. He was on top of the world; he was invincible. His skills were greater than theirs. He was too quick and too smart for them, darting between the cruiser traffic and ducking between buildings as he sprinted from the scene of the crime. He’d never get caught, not in a million years.

Which was why, when he ran round the corner and straight into the barrel-like chest of a guard, it caught him completely by surprise. And he was even more surprised when the credits he’d stuffed into his pockets spilled out over the pavement, their colours gaudy on the grey stone. He looked down at them, and then up at the guard. He couldn’t see their face, under the helmet. He should have run, but he didn’t. He just scrabbled for the credits, and that was his undoing.

The next few moments were a blur. He remembered the guard lifting him up with one beefy hand, taking the credits from him and placing him in a nearby cruiser. They had shouted to their fellow guards to join, and more had clustered around him like vultures. He remembered sitting there, dumbstruck, as he sped through the streets. He’d never been in a cruiser before. He wanted to look out of the windows, but there were Federation officers either side of him and all he could do was sit and stare at his boots. He remembered being marched into a tall, grey building, as the officers shouted at him and asked him for his name and address. They kept on asking in the small room he was ushered into, pitch-black with uncomfortable plastic chairs. He didn’t want to tell them at first, but they told him they’d know if he lied to them and he felt the tears prick behind his eyes, ready to well up.

He told them, and they wrote it on their screens. One of them took another aside, and they loudly began to talk about options – juvenile wards, penal colonies, correction institutions. They said they wanted to ‘make an example of him’, and Vila shrank down further in the plastic chair. He didn’t know what a lot of what they were saying meant, but he knew that it was bad.

The guards said that nobody was going to come and get him, so he should just tell them everything that he had done. He’d been caught stealing, but were there any other crimes that they should know about? Assault? Arson? Murder?

Vila squirmed in the uncomfortable chair and tried to explain. No, he hadn’t done anything else, he’d never do that, why did they think he’d done something really bad? He needed those credits, needed them for his mother, wouldn’t they let him go back to her? He promised he’d never be bad again. He’d be good forever. He’d never steal again. He’d stay in school and get a job and work all day for the Federation like a good boy, if they’d just let him go.

But he couldn’t have been convincing enough, because the guards did not let him go. They took him from the dark room and the plastic chair and put him somewhere else. A grey room, with a little sink and a stained bed on the wall. One of the walls was cut away, bars stretching from floor to ceiling where the wall should be.

He’d cried a little, then. He wondered if he’d ever see his mum again. This was it, he’d blown it. They were going to wipe his brain and put him on a planet far, far away, that was what happened to people stupid enough to get caught. Everyone knew that.

Vila sat on the grey blanket, and considered wrapping himself up in it. He did that at home, when his mum was working and Kel was busy and nobody else in the building was around. He wrapped himself up in the blanket that was always draped over the sofa, and pretended that he wasn’t alone. It was handy, because it kept him warm when the heating was off again.

Here wasn’t the place for it, though. There was another guard outside the cell, helmeted and stood to attention, and he’d see. Vila patted the mattress instead, and thought of home. It may have been small and cold and dark, but he’d have given anything to see the apartment again. He’d sleep on the sofa forever, he didn’t care. All he wanted was for someone to take him away from here.

It was hours later that someone came for him. Not his mum. His neighbour, Kel. He seemed on edge when he was taken into the cell, taking Vila’s arm roughly and dragging him out into the street.

“Thank you, officer,” he said to one of the guards. “I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble from now on.” And he pulled at Vila’s arm, eliciting a small squeak of protest from the boy. Vila tried to wriggle out of his grip, but Kel’s hand was as strong as it was rough. It rasped against Vila’s arm through his tunic, and with no more words Kel took him around the corner towards their building.

When they were out of sight of the guard office, Kel took his other arm and held Vila out in front of him. His face was red, and there was an emotion in his eyes that Vila couldn’t place. It was halfway between anger and fear, the kind of worried relief that his mother had shown when Vila got lost as a little kid.

Kel shook him, roughly. Vila’s head tilted forwards and back, a headache brewing beneath his skull. Some tears leaked from his eyes, then, and Kel stopped shaking him.

“What did you go and do that for?” he said, his voice intense and layered with desperation. “Just when I thought I could trust you. You’re lucky your mother wasn’t home. Federation guards knocking down her door, she’d have died of shock!”

Vila sobbed, looking down at his feet. His cheeks were wet with tears and streaked with dirt from when he’d fallen. Kel’s expression softened, and he knelt down so that he was on Vila’s level, his soft grey eyes looking into Vila’s watery brown ones.

“Hey,” he said, and his voice was almost normal again. “Look, I didn’t mean to shout. You just have to understand. Robbing a shop, in broad daylight? Stealing, Vila? That what gets you sent away. That’s what makes them come and take us all away. You understand?”

The boy said nothing. His body shook with the effort of not crying. He didn’t like crying in front of people. It was what made him soft, that was what the other boys said.

“Promise me, Vila,” said Kel. “For your mum’s sake, at least. Promise me you’re not gonna get caught doing something this stupid again.”

Vila thought about it for a moment. He remembered the feeling of the credits in his hand, their smooth plastic and the bright colours printed onto them. He remembered running down the street with them weighing down his pockets, the weight in his chest lifted. He remembered feeling free. But then the dark room and the plastic chair loomed, a shuttle ride flanked by guards that ended in hours spent on a tough, springy mattress behind the steel bars of a cell, and he shuddered.

He looked up at Kel, giving him a firm nod. “I promise,” he said, and he meant it.

Kel clapped him on the back. “Good lad. Keep it like that, okay?” He stood, and indicated the street ahead of them. “Now, let’s get some food in you and drop you back home, eh? My treat.” Vila nodded again, walking beside his neighbour away from that place, and towards home.

Two hours later, Vila sat on the sofa at home, staring into nothingness. The room was dark, the lights off to save on the bills. Outside, he knew, the day had turned to night and the electric lights were beginning to flicker on. His mother would be home in a few hours.

His stomach rumbled. Kel had deposited him in his apartment, then come back a few minutes later with a plate of sandwiches. Thinly sliced synthetic ham lay between hard bread, but it was the first food Vila had eaten that day, and he practically inhaled them. Kel had smiled and tousled his hair, and told him to stay out of trouble. Then he’d gone, and Vila was alone again. Still hungry, still cold.

He drew his blanket around himself, feeling its scratchy fabric under his skin. His mum would be home soon. It was his turn to sleep on the sofa. He should be asleep when she got back, it was a school night. But Vila didn’t feel like sleeping. He didn’t really feel like doing anything, if he was honest.

In his mind, he kept replaying the last few hours. The credits slipping out of the machine, his run through the streets, the guard’s solid chest in front of him, the dark room, the cell. Over and over it played in his head, like he’d accidentally selected a movie to play on a loop on the view screen. The images flashed through his head, unspooling before his eyes until it was all he could see. Credits, streets, guard, room, cell. And one thought, underlying it all.

 _Next time, I’ll do better_.

Vila kicked his legs out from underneath him, settling down to lie properly on the sofa. The blanket was draped over him, its patchy colours dull in the darkness of the room. Nothing had changed. He’d got caught, so nothing had changed. But he’d felt the weight of a roll of credits, felt the freedom of running away from the Federation, and there was no going back from that. Vila had never felt so good in all his life. He was free, his limbs pumping and his heart pounding. For that one glorious moment, he was on top of the world. Vila Restal, standing above it all. Invincible Vila! Lying there in the dark, he would give anything to have that feeling again, if only for a second. And there were still bills that needed paying, things that needed buying. He would just have to be more careful. Do better. Practice more, that was the key.

After all, he thought, the grin returning to his face as he closed his eyes. He’d never said he wouldn’t try it again. Technically, he’d only promised Kel he wouldn’t get caught.


	2. Liberated

Vila looked around the ship’s flight deck and whistled.

Now that he had the chance to take it all in, it was definitely an impressive sight. Huge, too, bigger than any ship he’d ever been on before. Okay, that wasn’t a massive pool of ships – mostly prisoner transports and the odd cheap public transport shuttle – but still. It was huge, that was what he was getting at.

The ship – the _Liberator_ , that was what Jenna had called it – was not something Vila had expected to see again. Not after Blake, Jenna, and Avon had somehow wrangled their way into stealing it and getting off the _London_. Great con, that, he’d said to Gan later. Would be a whole lot better if they’d worked out a way to bring us too, eh?

Well, they had, and Vila’s days of underestimating Blake were certainly at an end. Sure, he’d only managed to get him and Gan off the planet, but that was hardly Blake’s fault. He’d tried to rescue them all, and that was what was important, at least in Vila’s eyes. And now he was free as a bird on the deck of the most impressive ship he’d ever seen, speeding away from Cygnus Alpha with the Federation pursuit ships just dots in the distance. All in all, a rather successful day.

He leaned against one of the chairs on the flight deck, grinning. “Big ship, this,” Vila said conversationally, to whoever was listening.

Avon glanced up from the console he was poking at and glared at Vila. “Very astute of you, Vila,” he said, his voice dry. “Now, unless you have any more erudite observations to make, would you mind getting out from under our feet? Some of us are trying to work here.”

“Spoilsport,” said Vila, but that didn’t wipe the smile from his face, or the bounce from his step as he wandered away from the flight deck. Avon was right. He should stretch his legs a bit, get the lay of the land. And see if there was anything worth nicking on this thing, of course.

He started off down one of the ship’s hexagonal corridors, making sure at first to stay within shouting distance of the others. It was all very well and good, having a great big ship, so long as you knew your way around it. Gradually, though, Vila grew more confident in his explorations and wandered a little further out.

His first impressions of the ship were that it had a whole lot of empty rooms. Sure, there were a couple of medbays, a few storage areas full of gold (dismissed by Vila as being too much of an easy target) and clothes (now that was more like it – he made a mental note to revisit that one), some supplies and repair equipment that didn’t interest him, some stuff he couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was, and a corridor full of rooms that could have been cabins, with a bit more decoration. But most of the rooms that he entered were the same as each other. Grey and blank and empty, abandoned by whoever had owned this ship before Blake and the others took it.

That sent a shudder down his spine. He’d never really given much thought to the idea of aliens, but from what the others said and from what he was seeing, it was obvious that this thing wasn’t human-designed. Whatever had left it derelict was surely known to the aliens as well. What if they came back for it? The thought made his feet itch. They did that, when he was thinking of running away. But there was no going back. Not to Cygnus Alpha, or to Earth. He was in this for good, whether he liked it or not.

Vila sighed, leaning back against one of the walls. That was the problem. Every time he thought that he was safe, something always came along to muck it up. This time, the problem came along in the form of Blake, and all the trouble that he brought with him.

Everyone in the Delta levels knew Roj Blake. Or, more accurately, knew of him. There was a time, when Vila was younger, that Roj Blake was the name on everyone’s lips. The leader of the rebellion! The one who’s going to save us all from the Federation! He was a kind of Messiah according to the Deltas, and Vila couldn’t begrudge them their faith. He just didn’t share it. Figureheads came and went, you read about them in the history books. They never won. You always read about them from the Federation reports – terrorists and criminals, who got their well-deserved death at the end of a blaster. Blake was no different. He was caught and renounced his part in the revolts, and in the Freedom Party. Whoever he was, it was all wiped away. Vila had seen it happen. Almost had it happen, a few times. It never stuck on him, for whatever reason. Maybe he was just lucky. Or unlucky, depending on your perspective.

But then Blake had resurfaced, and not as a would-be-revolutionary. He was a child molester, this time. Vila had watched the trial unfold on the view screen outside his cell with an air of glumness. His cellmates had a variety of responses – he was actually guilty and the scum of the Earth, he was innocent and being framed because of some new revolutionary action, who even cares, he’ll probably be on the same prisoner transport as us. That one had amused Vila until it was proven to be true.

When he arrived, most of the others gave him a wide berth. More trouble than he was worth, they muttered in their dark corners. Vila had no such qualms. Partly because he recognised in this newcomer the haze of having been brainwashed one too many times; partly because Vila hadn’t quite cemented his reputation as a buffoon yet among this lot. Blake ended up having a nice watch and a reasonably full wallet, not that it’d help them on Cygnus Alpha. Plus, Stannis made him give them back.

Jenna Stannis. Oh, to be locked up with such celebrity! Vila had known of Jenna before he had met her. Most people in the underworld of the Dome had. She was an almost legendary smuggler, able to evade the Federation traps and blockades as if it was second nature. What, exactly, had got her locked up in this hole was beyond Vila. But she was here, and she treated him with a little less disdain than most of the others. He knew her game; sensed the fear running beneath the sarcastic exterior. They all had it, here. Scratch the surface, they were all just a bunch of softies pretending they weren’t bricking it at the notion of being stuck on Cygnus for the rest of their lives.

“Well, this is a privilege,” he had said as she was brought into the cell, her expression haughty and just daring the rest of them to mess with her. “Fancy someone of your calibre showing up in our humble little cell.”

She had sat down primly on one of the beds and, sensing an opportunity for actual conversation for once, stuck out his hand.

“Vila Restal. Professional thief, best in the business. No need to introduce yourself, of course, everyone knows someone who knows Jenna Stannis.”

She had raised an eyebrow at that. “I wasn’t aware I was such a celebrity.”

Vila had scoffed. “Oh, don’t be modest. You don’t get to be Jenna Stannis without knowing you’re Jenna Stannis. Er, so to speak.”

Jenna had laughed, which meant she wasn’t going to slap him. That was a good enough sign in his book. This crowd wasn’t exactly the friendliest lot. Out of everyone he’d tried to talk to, she was the only one who’d answered.

“Well, Jenna Stannis, I must say that it’s an honour to be locked up with you.”

“I’ll return the compliment if you stop saying my name like that.” She had smiled at him as she said it though, a challenge in her glittering eyes.

They ended up talking a lot over the few days that they were locked up together, more for lack of conversation partners than anything else. Jenna was decent company, and Vila had a decent line in sarcastic repartee. They stuck loosely together until Blake arrived and they were all shoved on board the _London_.

She had taken to Blake, and so had he. The man was a lot less formidable when you got to know him, more confused and idealistic. Vila had seen his type, down in the Delta grades, and he knew that they never lasted long. Of course, Blake was an Alpha, that was how he’d made it past his eighteenth birthday probably. Idealists didn’t tend to last long where he was from. Still, Vila knew the need to get in with a group early. This wasn’t his first penal colony, though it seemed like it might be his last. So he banded together with Blake and Jenna, and hoped that he hadn’t thrown his lot in with the wrong crowd.

On the _London_ , they had met more people, from all over the colonies. Mostly from Earth, though there were a few from other places. Vila had taken a glance around the room as they were all strapped into their seats, sizing them all up. No women bar Jenna – unusual, in his experience, but that was no matter. Only one of them seemed to stand out to him. Olag Gan, the tallest man on the ship by far. He looked like the kind of gorilla type that could crack the skulls of the guards easy as blinking, and Vila spent a good time trying to guess why he hadn’t.

It only took a minute of actually talking to the guy to figure it out, of course. Gan was nothing if not a gentle giant. He wasn’t exactly a fighter by inclination, more the type to sit at home and philosophise. This fully perplexed Vila, who had always been of the opinion that if he had the strength, he wouldn’t waste any time in using it to its full potential. They had their first conversation under the blinding lights of the mess hall, not too long after Gan had stopped a nasty altercation between Vila and another prisoner.

“Even if I wanted to, Restal, I couldn’t,” Gan said, before pointing to a spot on his head. “Limiter. I can’t kill anything. If I try, it’ll activate.”

Vila winced. “Nasty work. I knew a guy with a limiter back on Earth, he – well, you’d rather I didn’t tell you how that ended, actually. Wasn’t exactly a fun story.”

“Probably not,” Gan said, but he was smiling. “Do you have any less personally horrifying stories, Restal? For example, how you got here. It’s only fair.”

Vila smirked. “Fair enough. And call me Vila, it sits a lot better than ‘Restal’. Restal’s what the guards call me when they’ve got a gun to my head.”

They had shared stories, and since then Vila and Gan had been by each other’s sides most of the time. They had an instinctive bond; Gan was the muscle, protecting Vila when his smart mouth got him into trouble. Vila, in turn, had a knack for ‘finding’ little luxuries, which he happily shared with Gan. It wasn’t too much. Cookies that had fallen out of a guard’s pocket, bits and pieces from the other prisoners who were a little more checked out. He’d once lifted a whole deck of cards from the captain, which had been entertainment enough for everyone until he was caught. That didn’t deter him, though. Once the other prisoners caught wind of what he was doing, he was flooded with requests and suggestions, which he was more than happy to fill if it wasn’t too dangerous. Soon, he found that he had enough of a reputation that most of the ship would tolerate him, which he counted as a victory.

“See, Gan, a resourceful man’s always got friends,” he said one day. Truth was, Gan was the only one that he actually saw as a friend back then. Jenna too, maybe, but Gan was the only one he could actually talk to about things that weren’t the prisoner’s day-to-day. He didn’t know what it was about him, but the guy was incredibly easy to get along with. He supposed that he needed an actual friend, in here, someone who he could trust to watch his back and not nick his stuff. He was grateful for that, at least.

One person who didn’t want to make use of Vila’s resourcefulness was Kerr Avon. A hacker, in for some kind of fraud/theft situation. Probably an Alpha, from his demeanour. He was snobbish and rude and spent most of his time sitting on his own, perusing a scrap of paper that he had brought from Earth. Most people stayed away from him; not because he was dangerous, but because he was liable to insult everyone who came close. Vila had tried, once, but that encounter had ended in him backing away with an earful of abuse.

He hadn’t liked the guy, and had grown to suspect him as time passed. Avon was smart, and he seemed the ruthless type. He’d sell them all out as quick as breathing, and go free with his hush money. Vila knew it had happened before. He’d heard whispers, from other prisoners in other places. So he always kept one eye on Avon, just in case.

And now they were all here together. Not locked up any more, free and alive on a ship that could blast away any Federation vessels that dared come close. So why did he feel so uneasy?

The answer, surprisingly, was Blake. He’d thought it would be Avon, but it was Blake. The reasons for this were many and complex, and it took a solid five minutes of thinking to puzzle them out behind his instinctive feeling of ‘bad situation get out’.

See, Blake was an idealist. And he was in charge. That didn’t bode well for Vila’s lifespan. He vaguely recalled hearing of things that Blake had been involved in before he was caught – daring raids, secret missions, vital resistance stuff – and Vila just didn’t have the stomach for that, let alone the inclination. If he was honest, he hadn’t stuck with Blake because he believed in Blake’s cause, he just wanted to get away from the _London_. And if he got a chance to stick it to the Alpha bastards who’d put him there, well, all the better. But that was where it ended. Vila wasn’t a revolutionary, he was a pragmatist. All he wanted was enough credits in his pocket to live comfortably, and enough freedom from the Feds to get them.

Vila knew what revolution looked like. Blood and battle, bodies lying in the streets. He wanted none of it. He had never been political. He saw what happened to politicals. The Feds always asked questions, and you'd definitely live to tell the answers. Not that you'd want to, by that time.

But he’d let Blake rescue him, so now he was part of Blake’s crew. Well, better that than being killed by cultists down on Cygnus. But there was still something inside him that wondered what being part of Blake’s crew meant, and what fresh dangers that would bring.

Vila wrapped his arms around himself, sliding back against the corridor until he was sitting on the floor. That was the problem. There were too many unknowns, too much that he couldn’t predict. It was a whole new environment, out in space with a bunch of people he only knew because they were all locked up together. Hardly a safe place, but it was the safest he was going to get.

He closed his eyes, thinking. An image flashed through his mind, not too long before. One of the cultists slumping over onto Blake. A knife, covered in blood, in front of him, and Vila was dimly aware that he was the one who had pushed it in. Trying to save Blake’s life, but all he could say was “Well don't just stand there, Vila, run!” and sprinted off without even looking at him. Vila had dropped the knife after that. He didn’t know why. Better to have a weapon, place like that, but he’d left it on the cold stone floor.

Drops of red on grey. Vila shook his head. He wasn’t a murderer, was never violent. He’d always been proud of the fact that, despite having a criminal record as long as his arm, he’d never hurt anyone who hadn’t been trying to hurt him first. Oh, he knew how to throw a punch if things got a bit dicey, but that was the extent of it. Not what had happened down there.

He had just stared at the knife, he remembered. All to help Blake, to save the life of the only man that could get him off this rock. And the guy grunted, and fell onto Blake, and he was dead. And Blake just ran off like it was nothing.

It didn’t sit right with Vila, for reasons that he wasn’t sure he understood yet. He didn’t know much of Blake, not really. All he knew was what he’d seen on the _London_ , and what he knew from the old reports and newscasts of his fights from the old days. He didn’t seem the type for restraint, or holding back when things got tough. He was more of an ‘ends justify the means’ type, which was all very well and good until you were the one who he had to sacrifice for the Cause. It wasn’t particularly a cause the Vila believed in. Sure, he wanted rid of the Federation as much as the next Delta. But he didn’t feel like dying for that ideal, and certainly not under Blake’s orders.

Vila needed to be smart about this, smarter than people gave him credit for. If he was going to survive as part of Blake’s crew, he needed to watch what he said. He’d already built up his reputation as being a bit of a cowardly idiot, and that’d suit him well. Make sure he wasn’t listened too when he groused about things, which gave him enough time to see which way the wind was blowing. Whether he should resign himself to being in danger, or be ready to argue his way out of it.

He had complained before. That was his game. Complain about everything, and they won’t take umbrage when you question their tactics for real. They won’t even be able to tell. It’d just be normal cowardly Vila, wanting to save his skin. He wanted to back out because he had a yellow streak, not because he fundamentally didn’t want to fight. Vila Restal didn’t question ethics. He just wanted to survive.

It had always been what he did. Back at home, when he was surrounded by criminals bigger and nastier and scarier than him – well, in those cases he usually got out of it on his reputation. He was the best cracksman around, everyone knew it. There wasn’t a lock that Vila Restal couldn’t pick, and everyone knew it. If he engaged in some good-tempered whining on the way, who would pay any mind? He was essentially harmless, cowardly little Vila. A professional, who would always get the job done. But a harmless one.

Back at home. Vila smiled to think of it now. Earth, the land of opportunity. Even if he hadn’t been outside the Dome. There was still plenty of things behind locked doors just waiting to be liberated. That was his definition of liberation, never mind Blake’s revolutionary nonsense. Shiny things kept behind locked doors that were just waiting to be freed, and dropped straight into his pocket. Not a lot to steal, out here in space. Not a lot of locks to pick, either. He wondered if he’d become obsolete, once Blake’s revolution really got going. Jenna flew the ship, Avon had his computer stuff, Gan could throw his weight around – but Vila? Vila was brilliant at one thing and not good at anything else, and it wasn’t going to do him a lick of good.

He looked around the large, empty corridor, and felt very small. Five of them, out there on a ship somewhere in the void. Vila had barely ever been off Earth before. It was either the Dome or the penal colonies for him, and both of them crammed with people. Not like here. He’d never been alone like this before, out here in a blank, white corridor with not all that much to protect him from the vacuum. No crowds to blend into. Yes, he was free. But he was starting to feel very claustrophobic all of a sudden, floating through space in a big old can. Even if he had all the wealth that he could want.

Suddenly, a wave of homesickness washed over him, and he tilted his head back to rest it against the blank wall of the ship’s corridor. Funny, really. Ask him a year ago what he’d prefer – his dingy little space back in the Dome or a great big space ship far away from anyone who could hurt him – and he’d have laughed. But here, without any of the things he was familiar with, without anything but the clothes on his back, he began to miss the old place back on Earth.

It really wasn’t much. He’d rented a room from a mate, dirt cheap but still less than he could afford most of the time. Sure, he made a fair few credits doing ‘odd jobs’ for people, but when you put it together and subtracted their cut, he was left with not quite enough to pay off the guy. Not to mention the fact that he usually blew his cut on alcohol and shiny things that he didn’t need. Room full of trinkets, and he still didn’t have a proper bed.

When he said rented a room, he meant it literally. There was a small stove that he used to make food, a couch in the middle that doubled as a bed, a threadbare rug and a view screen that meant he could at least watch trash telly when he had nothing better to do. No bathroom – that was down the corridor and shared with a bunch of guys, mostly felons like him. Everything was done in a horrible shade of brown and there were no windows, no natural light. You didn’t get much of that living in the Domes, mind, but this was worse than usual.

Still, Vila found himself missing it. At least there, he knew the people he was surrounded by. Here was full of dangerous people who he barely knew, and it wasn’t like the space was home. It couldn’t be. He wasn’t so keen of finding a home on a space ship, feet off the ground and off into the black. Too much could go wrong, out in space.

He was aware of a hand on his shoulder, and looked up into the smiling face of Gan, far above. Vila’s instincts took over; he smirked on autopilot, and basically jumped to his feet.

“Hey, Gan,” he said, his voice full of an excitement that he didn’t feel. “Have you seen the room we’ve got here full of gold? I’ve never seen that much stuff in one place, and I’ve robbed banks you know.”

“Very nice,” said Gan. He was still smiling, and Vila got the distinct impression that he was smiling at him. Good. “Avon and Jenna have already been plundering the wardrobe, though I’m not too sure about Avon’s choice of outfit.”

“Let me guess – black leather? He seems the type.” That was it. Banter about the others, just like they had on the _London_ , and Gan wouldn’t guess that he was having misgivings.

“Actually, no, some ugly brown thing. Anyway, Blake wants us all on deck. He thinks Jenna’s figured out how to pilot this thing, but he needs all of us helping.”

“Does he now?” Vila heaved himself off the floor, cracking his shoulder as he stood. “Well, alright then. Just so long as he doesn’t expect me to be doing any fancy flying, I’ve never had a head for space ships.”

Gan chuckled. “I think he just wants us to look in, Jenna seems like she’s got the situation handled.”

“Well, good.” Vila shook his head. “I don’t know if I like the look of that console, Gan. Alien stuff, you know. You don’t know if it’s gonna explode, or something.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but nothing seems to have blown up yet.” Gan held his hand out, gesturing for Vila to follow him as he set off back down the corridor. Vila followed, a step behind and chattering all the way.

“Well, you never know with these alien things. Hey, do you think this thing has any food in it? Wouldn’t want us to all starve to death on this great big miracle ship. There’s a thought, actually. Has anyone looked around for a kitchen on this thing? ‘Cos I can whip up a mean beans on toast, but that’s useless if we don’t have a kitchen.”

Gan walked beside him, his large presence comforting to Vila. He was listening, even if he didn’t talk all that much. That was Gan’s way. It was good to know that he had someone that he could trust, on this ship. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. Gan wasn’t really one for blindly following Blake, and Jenna could hold her own in an argument. And Avon was the most contrary man he’d ever met, between them they could all shout Blake down if he was going to put all their lives in danger.

Yeah. Maybe they could make the _Liberator_ into something worth living on. Whatever Blake had planned, whatever reckless revolutionary schemes they had all unwittingly signed up for. Maybe things were looking up, after all.


	3. Bury The Dead Where They're Found

Vila lay on his bunk, staring at the ceiling and thinking of nothing. At least, he was trying very hard to.

There was an ache between his temples, a fuzzy static feeling that hadn’t dulled over the hours he had been in here. One hand trailed on the floor; next to it rested an open bottle, half full of green liquid, and a glass. Opposite the bed was a chair, over which was thrown some clothes, including the grey and yellow shirt that he had just been wearing. He had since changed into a white belted tunic – the first thing he could grab from his clothes pile. Across the rest of the small room were scattered his meagre belongings; things that he had picked up from planets, borrowed from inside the _Liberator_ or stolen from Avon’s cabin for a laugh.

He couldn’t see any of this, not at that moment. At that moment, his gaze was fixed on a single point on the ceiling of his cabin. Blank, smooth, grey metal. His eyes swept over it, categorising the marks and ridges in the material. Anything to keep him occupied. Anything to stop him thinking.

Vila closed his eyes. There was no use denying it. He couldn’t go back in time and undo it, couldn’t do anything at all. Gan was dead, and gone forever, and there was no turning back.

It had all happened so fast. They were fleeing, running down a corridor away from Travis. He’d seen Gan propping open a closing door and sprinted through it without even glancing back. His hands were on the ladder when the explosion rippled through the tunnels and then, too late, he’d looked back to see Blake appearing from the smoke, his tunic streaked in ghostly white dust. Behind him was a pile of rubble, and Vila’s mouth had asked the question before his mind answered it for him.

“Where’s Gan?”

“Gan’s dead.”

After that, Vila didn’t feel much. He’d climbed back up to the outside, teleported back to the _Liberator_ , and collapsed into one of the chairs without even saying a word. Nobody else did, either. Even Avon seemed too exhausted to shoot a few choice words at Blake. Blake had just given Zen some orders, and everyone had dispersed.

Vila had planned to stay on the flight deck for a while longer, but Gan’s chair was looming over him like a memorial and his head was aching more than he’d ever felt, so he absconded to his room for a while to get some sleep.

Not that sleep had come easily for him. Or, indeed, come at all. He just lay here, listening to the sound of the ship humming as it sped them away from Earth, the whir of fans in the vents. Outside, there was the occasional sound of boots clanging against the metal floors as people passed by his cabin. No voices – nobody was speaking, not that he had heard. Blake had gone off to his cabin the second that Zen got the ship moving. Cally, after a few moments, had also wandered off somewhere. When Vila had left, Jenna was sitting in her chair, head resting in her hands as she stared blankly at the console. Avon was on the lower flight deck sitting bolt upright, his expression impassive and unreadable as ever. Vila knew him well enough to know that he was thinking, and honestly he didn’t care to figure out anything further.

He hadn’t passed through any of the other areas of the _Liberator_ on his way back to his cabin. He could have – the kitchen was on his way, as was the room they used as an unofficial recreation room – but the ghost of Gan was everywhere around him. This was where Gan sat when he had his sporadic lessons from Orac, there was where Vila had tried to teach him a few sleight of hand tricks when they were supposed to be on watch, that was where they had sat and played chess as Avon mocked them. The board was still set up on a table, Vila could see it through the door. Black to move next, though it was both rooks and a bishop down. A game never finished, and it never would be.

His cabin wasn’t a lot better, though it had somewhere to lie. Gan’s cabin was just beside his, and they had often sat together on the long, boring nights where Blake insisted that they stay awake and ready for action, just in case. They had shared long conversations in this room, talking about everything from politics to religion to old view screen shows. Vila had been teaching Gan some of his cooking skills in exchange for a bit of basic self-defence. That sort of thing. He hadn’t had that with any of the others. He couldn’t imagine chatting like that to Avon, free and easy, without having to second-guess every word that came out of his mouth. Or learning how to disable an attacker from Cally or Jenna, in that slow and patient way that was unique to Gan.

Come to think of that, Vila wasn’t sure he’d ever had anything like that before. Gan was a proper mate, not like some of the guys back home. They were comrades in crime, co-workers but not necessarily friends. There were some people he could talk to, some he could drink with, but nobody that he could stay up all night chatting about the shows he’d watched as a kid with, and how much of them were blatant propaganda in retrospect.

Vila’s hand went to the bottle beside his bed again, and he took a swig without opening his eyes. It was supposed to make him numb, but it didn’t work. He could feel his grip on consciousness slip slightly, but his body was still wide awake. No matter what he did, he couldn’t stop the images of Gan flashing through his mind. Gan smiling, Gan laughing him, Gan helping him when he was going to fall behind. He couldn’t quite imagine that was going to happen again. Any second now, he was expecting to hear Gan’s slow and heavy knock on the door, or his voice cutting through the comms static. But there was just the whirr of the fans and the buzz of the ship, and nothing besides. Gan was not there.

He had never lost anyone like this before.

That wasn’t to say that he had never lost anyone. On the contrary, people disappeared all the time back on Earth. Put in prison, sent to penal colonies or detention wards, shot out of hand or just plain disappeared, they vanished and Vila didn’t say anything. That was just what you did. If they were disappeared or shot, you didn’t speak of them again; if they were imprisoned, they were an old memory, spoken of as if they had never been there.

Life on Earth was so busy. You had to be active all the time just to have the chance at scraping a living. There was no time to sit down and mourn, no time to stop and breathe. But here, everything was different. They had nothing but time, and the space between stars. And Vila didn’t know what to do with himself.

He’d tried to think of him, at first. Then he’d found that too hard, and he’d tried to ignore it. Neither worked. It would be helpful if he knew how to grieve.

Funerals weren’t really something that happened in the Delta grades, but Vila had been to one. Recently, too. About a year before he was sent to Cygnus, his old neighbour Kel Vastan died. Age, mostly, and the damage that physical labour took on old bones. He was lucky to even make it that far. Most didn’t.

His mother had wanted to do something to remember him. They had buried him in Federation ground, out by the edge of the Dome where you could almost see the outside. Just her, Vila, and a few friends and neighbours. They had each said something nice about poor old Kel as his body was lowered into the ground. It wasn’t much, but it was a goodbye of sorts. At the very least, it had been enough to let them move on.

Vila sat up, his hands cradling his head. Slowly, he poured himself another glass of the sickly green stuff he called a drink and downed it in one. It made his thoughts both fuzzier and sharper, in equal amounts. Vila wasn’t a lightweight by any means, but he’d had about three too many already, and he was a contemplative drunk when he was actually, seriously drunk.

Already, the ship was starting to look that much larger without Gan in it. He had brought a balance to the crew that Vila could never define. It was a subtle thing. But there wasn’t a person in the galaxy who Gan couldn’t find some common ground with, even if they didn’t reciprocate the emotion. When they weren’t on some mission, when the tension of fight or flight lifted and they were afforded some time to relax, it was Gan who tried to bring them together. He didn’t always succeed, but he always tried.

But there was more to him than that, Vila thought with a rueful smile. Gan was the most moral among them, in a strange way.

Oh, he had killed a man once. An armed man, when Gan was unarmed and reeling from his wife’s murder. But the rest of them had chosen to be criminals, were repeatedly and unashamedly crooks. Even Blake and Cally, revolutionaries both, had chosen that life, and would use all sorts of means to defend their causes. Not like Gan. He’d tried to make the best of a momentary mistake, and it had ended up killing him.

Gan cared. That was the problem. Gan had always cared more than Vila about everything they were doing. In some ways, Vila always thought he was smarter than him. Not in the way that Blake and Avon were smarter than him, or the way that the schools had tried to drill into his head when he was a child. But Gan knew what he thought, and believed it. That was important.

Vila had never been one to believe in things. Things that weren’t him, that was. He believed in himself, believed in his own abilities and his own survival – although recently, he hadn’t been so sure. Vila’s priority was to survive. Even back at the start he’d known that. It was his priority more than Blake’s ideals, more than the whole rotten revolution. But Gan had thought that they were doing something important. Gan had believed. And he’d stuck to his belief, to his principles, even arguing with Blake – something Vila…well, Vila wouldn’t _seriously_ go that far. Not when he was unsure that Blake would take it as a joke.

But Gan had cared. And now Gan was dead. What did that say about the universe?

At his core, Gan had believed in being good to people. He was a realistic guy, he hadn’t thought that meant he’d never get into a fight. On the contrary, he’d seemed happy to jump in front of a punch for the little guy. It was how he and Vila had first met. Back on the _London_ , when Vila was still trying to be seen as a coward and a fool. One of the others had taken offense and tried to smack him one, when Gan reached down and grabbed the guy’s arm. Vila had thanked him, Gan had smiled and nodded, and that was that.

He didn’t know what it was that had made him stick with Gan. Okay, he did – it was his physical presence, his height and mass and the imposing way he just seemed to loom over everyone else. But there was something else beyond that, an air of goodness that just radiated from the man. He was patient. He’d always give you the benefit of the doubt. He made jokes about himself and wasn’t angry if you laughed at them.

He’d protected Vila when Vila had needed it. And he’d died saving them all. Giving them a chance to get away while a building was collapsing around them. Vila could never do that, not in a million years. But Gan had.

Had he known that he was choosing to die? Blake had told them what happened, as much as he could. “I’m not worth dying for,” Gan had said. His last words, even. But apparently the rest of them were, to him at least.

Worth dying for. An unstable revolutionary, a glorified smuggler, an alien terrorist, an emotionally cold hacker, and a cowardly thief. They were all worth dying for, in his eyes. Their lives were more important than his.

They hadn’t even been able to retrieve the body. Blake had tried, but the teleport signal was out of range. They’d left him there, under a pile of dust and rubble, to be disposed of by the Federation or just left to decompose. It wasn’t right, Vila had thought, but he hadn’t pressed it in front of the others. Of course he hadn’t. He had barely said two words to them since they had gotten back from the planet.

Gan had wanted to be buried in a field. Not in a coffin, just in the earth. So his body could feed the plants, and maybe something beautiful could grow from him. He’d told Vila this one night, as they were chatting over cards. (Vila had said that he wanted to be cremated and his ashes put in a brothel, so he could watch. That one got a chuckle out of Gan, and a slight blush too.) Vila wished that they could have honoured that, done something that wasn’t just leaving him there. Entombed in concrete, far under the earth. It wasn’t the right way to go, not for him.

His thoughts were interrupted by a noise at the door. A buzz and a beep from the communicator, then three sharp knocks. He frowned, heaving himself up off the bed. Who was trying to talk to him, now of all times?

He stumbled over to the door and tried to hit the opening button. His hand swept by it at first, scrabbling at the wall, but it hit on the second pass and the door slid open, the usual humming noise emanating from it. He winced to hear it, the sound far too loud in his ears.

Cally was stood behind the door, her mouth curved into a small smile. She looked more dishevelled than usual. The difference was subtle, probably invisible to anyone with less of a discerning eye than Vila. But he could see the creases in her dark blue gown, her hair that was wilder than usual, the slight pallor to her skin.

“I am sorry for disturbing you,” she said. Her voice was almost unnaturally neutral. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave him a sharp look. “You know what I mean, Vila. You were closer to Gan than the rest of us. This must have affected you more than anyone.”

Vila snorted, taking a step back and sweeping his arm out to welcome her in. She stepped gingerly over the threshold, looking around his small cabin like it was the first time she had ever seen it. Which, come to think of it, it probably was. They weren’t really all that much for that sort of thing as a group. Mostly they just called each other on the comms when they needed something. The only other person who had been in here was Gan and, well. He was gone.

Cally perched on his chair primly. From his vantage point, she looked like a bird waiting to spread its wings and fly away. Vila just threw himself down on the floor, not even bothering to try and disguise the half-empty bottle that was next to him. She must have known he’d taken it, she was in charge of keeping stock of the stuff. Her eyes flicked down to it, and her lips tightened, but she made no comment.

Vila snorted. “Why are you even here, Cally? I mean, no offense,” he said quickly, though in the moment he didn’t really care if he caused any or not. “But there’s not a lot you can do.”

“Oh?”                 

For someone who seemed to want to play the role of emotional support, Cally was being strangely quiet. Vila’s fists clenched, and he closed his eyes.

“Oh what? Gan’s dead, Cally. I know how much you look up to Blake, but this is what happens if we keep blindly following him into trouble to help him out. We get hurt, Cally. We get killed. What happens when he runs out of followers, eh?” There was something wet on Vila’s face. He was ignoring it, just drunk enough to think that if he didn’t acknowledge something, then it would just go away. “There was nothing there. Gan’s dead and we didn’t even get anything out of it. Not that it would have been any better if we did! But it was all for nothing, doesn’t that bother you?”

Cally was silent. She stared down at her fingers, which she tapped together slightly through the quiet. Vila suddenly became aware that he was stood up again, the glass in his hand and moisture in his eyes. He rubbed his sleeve over his face, collapsing by the bed again.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap,” he mumbled. That was one of his survival techniques. Never get properly angry at people, that was what made them hate you. But Cally was still sitting, still staring at her hands and the floor beyond them. If she had heard him, she didn’t acknowledge it.

Vila closed his eyes, his head leaning back against the bed. Stupid. That was all he needed, to alienate absolutely everyone he had left. Not like that was hard. He could count their number of the fingers of one hand, and still have a spare thumb.

“We got out of there.” Cally’s voice was quiet but firm. “That was what he died for. Us. He gave us the means to escape, and the time we needed to get away. Surely that’s not nothing.”

Vila’s eyes snapped open, and he looked up at Cally. Really looked, not like the last time when he had just glanced over her. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and he could see a pallor to her skin, dark circles beneath her eyes. Her fingers still tapped together, but now he could see the tremor in her hands. He remembered how she had looked the first time they had seen her, far away on an alien planet, the last survivor of a rebel cell. And just like that, it dawned on him that she might not have come in here for his sake after all.

He smiled at her, and this time it reached his eyes. “I’m going to try and sleep for a bit,” he said, hauling himself up and onto the bed. “You can stay a bit if you need the company. Apparently I talk in my sleep, and I’ve been told I’m an impressive conversationalist.”

Cally let out a choked half-laugh. “Thank you, Vila. I think I’ll sit here for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest,” he said with a smirk, and closed his eyes the second that his head hit the pillow. The last thing he remembered seeing before his vision faded into darkness was Cally, her face falling and her head bowed, exhaustion etched into every angle of her body. His sleep was, for once, dreamless and devoid of long white corridors and the dust that falls from ceilings.

She was gone when he woke. But the next time he saw her, when she wandered into the kitchen as he was rifling through a cupboard for something more edible than a protein pack, there was more colour in her cheeks and she smiled at him.

He put the chess board on Gan’s chair in the flight deck. Black to move next, one bishop and two rooks down. It wasn’t a goodbye, just a marker of what could have been. But if that was all he could get, then he’d take it. They needed a way to remember. They all did.

Vila didn’t think Blake knew the significance, but something in his eyes betrayed that he understood. Cally smiled when she first saw it. Jenna dusted it off occasionally, and left a half-empty glass of whiskey beside. A smuggler tradition, she told him later. Avon saw it, when he next went onto the flight deck, and rolled his eyes, but made no attempt to move the chess set back. That said a lot, coming from Avon.

Time moved on, days following days. At least Gan’s seat wouldn’t be empty forever, Vila thought. Small comfort, but comfort no less. He was remembered, and it was enough.


	4. Not The One To Talk Thing Through

Vila sat at his station in the teleport room, an empty glass beside him, and tried very hard to read the book-pad that was balanced in front of him. If he looked busy, it meant that Tarrant hadn’t got to him. That was the idea, at least.

A few long months had passed since Star One, and the last time he had seen Blake. Before he had time to turn around, they were piloting the _Liberator_ away from the system with two newcomers aboard, and no Blake or Jenna.

It was funny. He hadn’t given much thought to the dynamic on the _Liberator_ until Blake had left them. Blake was at the top, he’d thought, and everyone else did what he said or argued a lot. That was how they worked, and that was how it was.

Then Tarrant and Dayna came along. Without Blake, Vila had just sort of assumed that they would have the same relationship they always had. Him and Avon flying around looking for places to nick a lot of shiny things from, with Cally rolling her eyes in the background and trying to get them to become proper rebels again. Okay, maybe that was a stupid daydream, but it was one he had liked.

But things were okay. Avon took the lead, which he had expected. They still argued, still voted on where they would go. Nobody did anything that they _really_ didn’t want to do. They were equal, more or less.

‘Were’ being the operative word. Vila still had the dust of ‘Vilaworld’ on his boots, the marks of the crystals he had snatched in his palm, Kerril’s scent on his clothes. He wasn’t really meant to be here. The ship was in transit, nobody was on a planet or anywhere that might need a teleport. But it was the only place where nobody came when they didn’t need to, and he needed the solitude. More than anything, he needed to be alone with his thoughts.

Vila liked to be underestimated. It was the most useful tool in the con artist’s arsenal. Not that he was usually a con artist, but it never hurt to dabble. Especially when the money was good.

It was also a good tool for a Delta to have. In the rare times when Vila had needed to get a straight job for a while, it had proved invaluable. Keep your head down, nose clean, and blend into the crowd as much as possible. Because those who stick out either get promoted, or get shot. And Vila wasn’t too fond of either option.

So he dressed conservatively, made himself as small as possible to make sure that nobody would see him; and if they did, they’d think that he wasn’t a threat. Among his fellow criminals, he cultivated a jokey personality, making himself seem as shallow and harmless as possible on the off chance that they would look past his skills when deciding whether or not he was a loose end. He babbled about anything and nothing, and they rolled their eyes at him and treated him with no respect, but at least he was alive.

Not all of it was fabrication. He was, by nature, a bit of a coward, and it was a genuine nervous habit of his to just talk until someone stopped him. But the persona he put on like an old shirt every morning was an exaggeration of those traits, twisted until they became a person in their own right, who was Vila, but wasn’t quite him.

On the _Liberator,_ it had been more of a challenge to go unnoticed. He mostly did what Blake told him to do, and only truly complained when he had people who could back him up. He sat on the flight deck when he was on watch and played cards with Gan when he wasn’t, and nobody seemed to see him as a threat.

Avon had seen through it, he was sure. Some of the others, too, but Avon especially. Vila was sure of it. Avon looked over at Vila sometimes with a glint in his eye that showed him that he knew what Vila was hiding. Who Vila was, underneath it all. It chilled him to the bone, if he was honest. But Avon seemed to be onto his game, and Vila was okay with that, because it meant that Avon respected him enough to keep him around. He had seen behind the cracks in Avon’s façade too, knew that they were both putting on personas each morning. They had reached an equilibrium, and Vila liked it, because he knew where he stood. They had conversations sometimes, behind closed doors when the others weren’t around, where they both came close to dropping the people that they were pretending to be. They were comfortable enough with each other.

Then Tarrant came aboard, all bluster and arrogance, and Vila had taken an immediate dislike to him. And with him came Dayna, cold and ruthless and not ready to suffer fools. He had hidden again, behind the superior word of Cally and Avon, and that had worked for him. As long as they stood by him, the others had no ammunition.

Until now.

He didn’t want to go and pick locks for people he’d never met for some lousy crystals. He certainly wouldn’t have worked with Bayban the Butcher, had he any say in the matter. But Tarrant had made it clear what fate he would meet if he didn’t comply, and Vila had deflated instantly.

Tarrant said what they were all thinking. Vila knew that one for sure. He saw the way that Avon looked at him, heard the disappointment in Cally’s voice, and the outright disdain in Dayna’s. Tarrant was the only one who bothered to say it aloud, so that everyone could hear. That was the only difference. Well, Avon did too, he supposed, but not in the same way. He understood Avon. Tarrant was a mystery. A mystery with a sharp tongue and a habit of hitting where it hurt.

He didn’t care, really. Well, he did, but it didn’t matter. He’d been travelling with Cally and Avon long enough, he knew how they thought. Tarrant and Dayna were outranked by Avon, most of the time. Vila had earned his place. Or so he had thought.

Was that all he was, to them? Useful? He wasn’t exactly one to claim unending kinship with them, but he had thought that there was something more to them than just crewmates who had spent a long time together. He’d thought that, maybe, they’d figured him out. Respected him, even, a little. For his skills, if not his personality. But then, what difference was there between that and being useful?

Do what we say or you’re out the door. Not a pleasant thought, especially when the door was a one-way teleport down to a planet where he was, undoubtedly, a wanted man. The universe wasn’t full of safe spaces, and they’d met enough people in hiding to know that the Federation was everywhere, even in the places that people thought they were safe. It didn’t matter. To put him off the ship now would be a death sentence, and he had no doubt that Tarrant knew it.

He thought about the planet he had left behind. He’d done it because the place wasn’t interesting enough. Because there was nothing to steal, nothing to do. Kerril wasn’t enough to keep him there. He didn’t have the temperament to be a colonist, and besides, he needed to get back to the others.

Vila stopped at that thought with a frown. Why? Why come back here at all? He remembered a time, an age ago, when Avon had asked him why he stayed with Blake. His reply was matter-of-fact – he liked Blake, and he had nowhere else to go. Well, he had been offered somewhere else to go, somewhere safe. And Blake was gone, off fighting his battles somewhere else. So why did he stay?

He didn’t have an answer to that one. Not a good one. Respect for Avon and Cally? The lingering ties of friendship? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to. But still, he had brought them back their bloody crystals, and they didn’t seem to give a toss what he had been through. He could have died. He thought he was going to! But it was just a sarcastic admission of pride from Avon, and a wry ‘welcome back’. Tarrant had offered his insincere apologies. But Vila knew what was buried beneath them, who the curly-haired dictator could be when he was trying. He wasn’t going to let his guard down against Tarrant, not again.

Vila closed his eyes, and his stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten in a while. Not since he left the ship, and that must have been hours ago. With a sigh, he pushed himself up from his chair and began to make his way to the kitchen. The book-pad lay on the teleporter’s console, abandoned. He didn’t even remember what he had been trying to read, anyway.

He pressed the door button and watched them slide open with trepidation. He was in luck. The _Liberator_ ’s hexagonal corridors were empty. He planned to grab something from the kitchen, then run back to his room and hole himself up in there until he felt like coming out. Which wouldn’t be until the next day-cycle, at least.

To his dismay, the kitchen was occupied. Avon and Tarrant, talking. He heard their voices through the door and cursed, not wanting to press the button. He didn’t want to go in there, not when Tarrant was there. He didn’t think that he could look Tarrant in the eyes now, not after what he had threatened. He was content just to skulk here until they had gone.

Avon’s voice, loud and domineering as usual, came through the flimsy metal door, and for some reason Vila found himself scuttling closer to it, straining his ears to listen to what they were saying. If they were talking about what had happened down on the planet, he wanted to know about it. At least if the pair of them were conspiring to put him off the ship, he would have some kind of warning. He could leave on his own terms, get Orac to teleport him somewhere before Tarrant could beam him out into space.

“…other methods,” Avon was saying. “You trying to persuade someone is not too different to picking a lock with a sledgehammer – loud, inefficient, and utterly the wrong approach. Not to mention the fact that they had no intention of honouring your little bargain.”

Tarrant’s voice was restrained, as though he was barely holding back a burst of anger. “I thought they were trustworthy.”

“You thought.” Avon’s tone was dripping with sarcasm; despite himself, Vila smirked. “Hasn’t experience taught you by now that nobody is trustworthy, no matter how in control you think you are?”

“I didn’t think-”

“No.” There was a tapping sound, the noise of feet moving around. “You didn’t _think_. That, Tarrant, is your main problem.”

“You’re being a bit harsh, aren’t you?” Vila could just feel the smugness radiating from Tarrant’s voice. “It all turned out alright. We got him back, and the crystals.”

“Yes, and by gambling both to start with. Sloppy, Tarrant.”

Vila’s eyebrow pricked up. That almost sounded like Avon defending him. Well, in Avon’s way. It wasn’t like him to ever show the emotions he was feeling, not if he could help it. Of course, Vila saw through it, at least enough to know what he was thinking some of the time.

From the kitchen, he heard Tarrant scoff. “I don’t see how Vila is all that valuable.” It was expected, but his callous words hit Vila in the gut. Apparently he ranked lower in Tarrant’s estimations than a bunch of crystals. Typical Alpha posturing, he thought. They never care about the little men who make the worlds turn. Not that Vila was one of those people, but he was closer to them than Tarrant was.

“He is useful. More so than you, as I told you before.” Useful. There was that word again. Although Avon seemed to prise his use above Tarrant’s; that was heartening. It was such an Avon thing to do, to rate people by their use. Cold and logical, just the way Avon wanted people to see him.

“I’m not sure I follow your reasoning.” Vila imagined Tarrant smiling at that, the brilliant white smile that was so utterly false.

“You are a pilot, Tarrant, that is your skill.” More clicking noises – Avon’s boots, probably. “All of us can fly the _Liberator_ , to some extent, and Zen can assist if we have difficulties.”

“So?”

“Vila is a thief, and a skilled one at that. None of us can match his prowess with a lock. I doubt anyone in the galaxy could.” He could just imagine Avon, leaning on a table and glaring at Tarrant with his no-nonsense stare. The image brought a grin to Vila’s face, and he scuffled a fraction closer to the door. “Do you understand my meaning now?”

Tarrant sounded both irritated and muted. “I think you have made your position quite clear.”

“As long as we understand each other.” Vila heard the smile in Avon’s tone, the barely suppressed edge of steel beneath the words.

There was the sound of movement, and the beep of a button being pressed, and Vila realised just in time that he didn’t want anyone to see him right now. He was around the corner before the sharp click of someone’s boots ceased to be muffled. Thankfully, the sound grew quieter as the person walked away. Who it was, he couldn’t guess. It didn’t really matter. He knew the kitchen wasn’t safe for him right now.

Vila edged back down the _Liberator_ ’s corridors, towards the teleporter room again. He’d get some food in an hour or so, when people had settled back into their routines and (more importantly) Tarrant was due up to keep watch on the flight deck. He could make a sandwich in peace, relatively speaking. Assuming Zen didn’t attempt to fly them through a comet or into Federation space again. The sound of the alarm really frayed his nerves every time.

He flipped the book-pad back over. That was what it was – some old spy novel, from the old days. He was about halfway through, apparently, and he didn’t even remember what had happened in the earlier parts. He scrolled through the pages back to something he did remember. An early scene, where the protagonist was being briefed on his next mission by the Old Earth government he worked for. His eyes scanned the lines of text on the screen, but his mind was far away from it.

There was a place on the ship for him. For now, at least. He didn’t even know what they were doing out here anymore. They had been drifting, purposeless, since Blake had left and taken his revolutionary principles with him. Maybe they were going to get back to some good old honest thieving. That’d make a change. Tarrant couldn’t be opposed to that.

He had a place here. The words kept echoing through his mind. It was as he had thought. There was a place for him on the _Liberator_ , among its crew – the remnants of his friends and the people that they had picked up along the way. They were fractured, but still together; splintered, but not broken. He had a place here.

And even Tarrant couldn’t take that away from him.


	5. Slightly Exaggerated

Vila sat hunched over on the floor of his room on the base. His eyes were glassy, his head bowed. In his right hand was a glass; in his left, a bottle of something poisonously alcoholic. Dorian’s old stock hadn’t quite run out yet. Something to be thankful for, he thought. Not that he had much, these days.

It had been three days since a certain shuttle had docked with the _Scorpio_ , and he hadn’t spoken a word to anyone since.

He took a swig from the glass, wincing at the taste. He wasn’t even sure what he was drinking. The label was written in some alien language – that, or he was too drunk to read. He didn’t care which. Either it killed him or it didn’t, what was the point of obsessing over it. Let it come.

His eyes were closed, his head resting against the cool white walls of the base. This room was larger than any other room he had inhabited – bigger than his room back on Earth and the cabin on the _Liberator_ put together. It was also the emptiest. Orac was the only thing he had managed to take from the _Liberator_ , and it wasn’t as though Dorian’s base was full of the little trinkets and knickknacks that he liked to adorn his living spaces with. White walls, white floor, grey chair, grey sheets, grey pillows. A shelf, filled with empty bottles. An empty desk. A bright fluorescent light that he usually kept off. No windows.

The alcohol was there to stop him thinking. It wasn’t working, not at all. Alcohol just made him think, sometimes. When he made a habit of taking it. That was the case now. His mind was churning, and his stomach with it, but it wasn’t the kind of sickness that came from drunkenness. It was something else entirely.

He kept remembering, that was the problem. He couldn’t help it. His mind kept going back to those moments in the shuttle, recalling everything in horrifically vivid detail. The moment they had realised that they were not going to make it out of the atmosphere. The desperate scrabble to throw out weight. Stripping metal from the walls, his hands riddled with miniscule cuts, his arms aching. Beside him, Avon, his expression neutral. Vila had recognised it as a warning sign. Avon tended to shut down when he was panicking, and he was not reacting well.

Vila knew they were in trouble. He’d said as much to Avon. “We’re not going to get out of this one,” he’d said, and this time it wasn’t his usual exaggerated pessimism. “Avon. We’re going to die.” Avon wasn’t one to accept death, he had scrabbled for anything they could do to lighten the load. Like bailing out a sinking ship, they worked harder than they had worked in their lives.

Five minutes until they died, and seventy kilos to go. Nothing left to lose. Bits of plastic, insulation. Not nearly enough.  Vila had gone to strip the cargo hold, caught up in the delusion that it would help. The door was closing behind him.

Then he heard it. Orac’s voice, almost smug. “Vila weighs seventy three kilos!” How it knew, Vila wasn’t sure. But something in him had snapped at that. His feet had taken him away before his mind could even begin to process what he had just heard.

Always have an escape route. Always have a hiding place. The shuttle was small, but he could hide. Five minutes, that was all the time he had left. That was all the time he needed to buy.

The silence was deafening.

He curled his body as small as he could make it. His face was pressed against his knees, his back flat against something hard and metal. All he needed was to not be seen, all he could do was hide. When the first sob came, he clamped a hand over his mouth and squeezed until he could taste blood. Don’t make a sound. Don’t move. All the old lessons he had learned flooded his mind. Don’t let him know where you are. Four minutes left. Don’t make any noise. Four minutes to die. Don’t let him find you. Four minutes before time ran out. Stay where you are and don’t get caught.

Avon’s footsteps, loud and ominous. Avon’s voice, echoing down the corridor. He was going to die in here. Alone and afraid. He was going to die, so far away from home. He was so sure.

But then Avon threw something out of the airlock, and he came out. His feet clattered against the floor, but he didn’t move. He heard Avon climbing the ladder, forcing the shuttle back into orbit. Orac’s cheery voice, telling Avon something. He stayed where he was, hunched over in the cold metal corridors, until he was sure that they were out of danger. That they weren’t going to die today.

He was so sure. But none of it mattered, really.

Vila looked around the base and remembered the _Liberator_. Remembered looking around that ship, and thinking of home. It had been a long time since he was last on Earth. He was beginning to wonder if he would ever see it again.

Last time he was on Earth as a free man, he was celebrating getting out of prison again with his mates, in some anonymous Delta pub. It was funny, looking back he could barely remember their names, and their faces were lacking in detail and fuzzy at the edges. Last time, he had boasted. Last time I get caught, ‘cos next time I’m getting shipped off-planet. It had seemed funny, then, after a few drinks. It hadn’t seemed funny when he woke up in a cell the next morning. Never plan a heist while drunk with people you don’t entirely trust. After that it was the usual round of detention centres, lonely makeshift cells, prison wards and, finally, the transit cell that he had met Blake and Jenna in.

Who would have thought, then, that he would miss the Domes and the grey skies of Earth? He hadn’t, that was for sure. But sitting here in a base, among familiar strangers, he wanted more than anything to be back under the great plastic wall that had held him in since he was born.

He hadn’t seen his mother, before he went. Doubtless she had seen him. Criminals getting shipped off-planet always had their details broadcast, to deter any other would-be felons. Vila imagined her in her tiny flat, almost fifty but looking much older than her years, watching the news screen as his face flashed up on it. He wished he had seen her, just one more time. He wondered if news of them was reaching Earth, underground messages passed down by word of mouth about the rebels who were still struggling out there. That might even make her proud, to know her son was trying to fight back. More likely it’d worry her.

It’d be a more heartening image if it were true, he thought, taking another sip of the purplish liquid. He shuddered, then topped up his glass. Yes, it’d be better if they were _actually_ fighting the good fight, rather than struggling each day just to survive and stay safe. Not that it mattered, not since the shuttle.

After they were saved, and on their way back to the _Scorpio_ , Vila and Avon didn’t talk. He had stepped down from his hiding place when he heard the airlock close. Avon had done it, saved the day. He went back to the control room and Orac. Was he expecting Vila to follow?

Vila went to the cargo hold and sat in the emptiness, his arms wrapped around his knees, his face resting on his legs. He sat there until the shuttle docked with the _Scorpio_ , breathing. In through his nose, out through his mouth. That was the best way. In and out, and try not to think about what happened. In and out, and try to pretend that you’re not alone.

They docked, and Avon and Vila left the shuttle separately. Vila didn’t look him in the eye until later, when they were sitting on the flight deck explaining what had happened in the barest detail. That was the only time Vila had spoken since. To let Avon know that he wasn’t going to forgive, and he wasn’t going to forget.

Avon didn’t even have the heart to look remorseful about it. Vila really was just a tool to him, just a pawn to be sacrificed in whatever games Avon was playing. Functional. Not a person, no. Not that it would matter, either way. Not to Avon.

Although it was Orac who’d betrayed him first. _To think I got you off the_ Liberator _, you stupid box of bolts_. The thought was small and spiteful, growing the more he thought of it. _This is how you repay me, eh?_ Vila took another swig of whatever it was he was drinking. It was a vindictive little box of bolts, and no mistake. Why it seemed to draw sadistic pleasure from seeing them in pain, he didn’t know. He wished he had left it on the disintegrating _Liberator_ , but that was a fate he’d wish on nobody.

 _Not even my worst enemy_ , he thought, and chuckled aloud.

All of these thoughts were covering others, thoughts that were buried deep down enough. The alcohol was dredging them up, raking the muck in his head and letting the darkest, most spiteful thoughts float to the top of his consciousness. There was something that he wasn’t thinking about, and it was eating him up inside.

Because the thing was, he knew that he was going to die there, but that knowledge didn’t come with Orac’s little pronouncement. No, it came earlier, when there was nothing else of the ship to strip away, when he and Avon had tried everything and come up blank. He had known then that they weren’t going to make it out of this one.

So why hide? The only thing that would change was the body count. Two corpses floating amongst the debris or one alone, what was the difference? He was a dead man either way. Why hide from Avon?

A thought, unbidden, floated to the forefront of his mind. _If Gan was on that spaceship, there would have been no question._ He would have offered it himself, the big lug. And Avon would have accepted, and he would have gotten away with his precious Orac and his precious life.

Vila wasn’t as self-sacrificing as Gan had been. On the contrary, he was selfish, to hide away like that. What had he been scared of? He’d known that he was going to die, known it from the start? Why was he hiding?

 _Because it was Avon._ His mind carried the thought he had been suppressing, and Vila took another swig from his bottle. _Because you foolishly thought, after all you’d been through, that he wouldn’t do that to you_.

“Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I?” Vila said aloud, suddenly shouting. The words bounced back at him off the blank white walls. No one was listening.

Avon. They understood each other, he had thought. They knew what made the other tick. Avon tried to be cold, but there was too much history there. They were the last two survivors of the original _Liberator_ crew; the only ones who had been on the _London_ , way back at the start. They had been through so much together. He had thought that, no matter what, Avon would at least try and save his life if he could.

Turns out all it takes for a guy to turn on you is five words from an amused computer. Five words shattering years of history and shared experience. Avon’s words were false, but his intent was not. Vila had no doubt that he would have done it – killed him and shoved his body out of the airlock, to drift eternal through the black. The end. Avon lives, Vila dies.

“What, am I not useful anymore?” he muttered. There was a lump in his throat, a pricking at the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t indispensable. Nobody was, not to Avon.

He had always thought that he could trust Avon to have his back. Well, not always. But since the first few weeks on the _Liberator_ , the times they had sat together on the flight deck and complained about Blake’s methods while planning elaborate grand heists, Vila waxing rhapsodically about what he would do with the money. He had grown to understand the man beneath the sarcasm and the cold smiles, and had grown to like him. He was a friend, though not in the same way as Gan. Gan, he could talk to about anything; Avon was more about long, political discussions in the middle of the night that made Vila’s head hurt.

That Avon was gone, thought.

He’d been a fool not to see it. The Avon he was friends with, the one that he had liked? He was gone. Probably he’d died with the _Liberator,_ at a cool twist of Servalan’s lips and a lie in the darkness. Whoever this Avon was, he wasn’t Vila’s friend. He was his commander.

The thought made him shudder. Vila refilled his drink, the bottle clinking against the rim of the glass. _To Avon_ , he thought, raising the glass. _To Avon, and curse the bastard who’s wearing his face._ He didn’t drink, though, because he knew that the thought was wrong. This wasn’t some impostor who had taken the idea of Avon and twisted him until he was nearly unrecognisable. This was the same Avon, just colder. No longer trustworthy.

No, he thought with a bitter chuckle, that wasn’t it. He could trust Avon, just as he always had. He could trust him to save his own neck to the expense of everyone else. That was who Avon was, when you boiled him down to his core. Just a robot calculating what was needed to keep going on for another day, no matter what the cost. A heartless, cold, unfeeling robot.

Vila didn’t know when the glass had left his hand, but he was faintly aware of it smashing on the wall opposite him. He sank further down floor, feeling the hard stone beneath his hands as he crumpled down onto it. There was something wet on his face, large droplets of water making trails down his cheeks. He swiped his sleeve over his face, blinking fast. No point thinking about it. What’s done was done. He knew his place, now. Knew how it was to be.

Orac’s voice rang in his ears. Funny, how five little words could change everything. No matter. So long as Vila understood where he stood, in the eyes of Avon and the crew. How much he could trust the people that he found himself allied with.

After all, you can always trust a machine to be a machine.


	6. All The Living Are Dead (And The Dead Are All Living)

Jenna walked through the scarlet streets, her head held high. She knew where she was going. She’d been to this moon several times before, a small and out-of-the-way place orbiting a vast red planet marked as unpopulated. It was far from any place where the Federation bothered to patrol and, as such, had become something of a hotspot for the rebels she hesitantly allied herself with.

The inhabited part of the moon wasn’t a large place. Some small shops providing necessities, a docking area for ships, some small motels. Not much else. It was a frontier moon, with few long-term inhabitants. But it was a good enough meeting spot, and that was why she was there.

Around her, the roads were washed red with the planet-light. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, tight and black. In this light, it looked almost the same colour as her tunic. It was her favourite, midnight blue and studded with small silver circles that shone like stars in the right light.

Her head was high, but her jaw was tight. There were new lines on her face and dark circles beneath her eyes. The years had not been easy, no matter how hard she fought. She walked with purpose, her past shed with every step. She didn’t look back any more. Her priority was the present, and the immediate future. She was going to eat, meet her contacts, then move on. Always keep moving, that was her watchword.

It had been three months since Blake had gone to Gauda Prime for the last time, and Jenna was taking every day as it came.

She had begun to worry when Blake didn’t call in that evening. They usually talked every night, at least for a few minutes. Checking in, talking tactics, and occasionally swapping stories of the strange things they had seen that day. It was her way of telling that he was still alive.

But that evening, he hadn’t called in, and she was beginning to worry. She always worried when he was late, even if there was probably a good reason for it. And there often was – Blake kept a shoddy schedule, and she had spent many a night sitting in her cabin and staring at a blank screen. He always called in eventually, usually with a sheepish smile and an excuse for his tardiness.

The next day there was still silence. Nobody had heard from him at all. She went about her day thinking that he was okay, that he’d just got caught up in one of his elaborate schemes and would contact them that night. She told herself that enough that she’d almost convinced herself it was true.

Then she saw the newscasts, and everything changed. The first set of information they gave was sparse. Shootout between groups of rebel forces. Notorious Freedom Party leader Roj Blake – terrorist, child molester and fugitive – shot by fellow rebel Kerr Avon. Six bodies recovered from Gauda Prime. Blake, Avon, three people she had never heard of, and Vila. A victory for the Federation.

Nobody among the rebels knew what to think. It was known among some select circles that Avon had been searching for Blake, but everyone had assumed at least an amicable relationship. She had known, of course, that this wasn’t quite the case, but she had assumed that if Avon was looking for Blake, it was because he wanted to work with him. To find him, not kill him. She hadn’t thought that he would ever do it. Even after how they had acted on the _Liberator_ , she’d thought there was enough twisted friendship there to sustain them.

She’d laid low after that one. It wasn’t too hard. She was already in some cover, having changed her name and faked her death a while before. Blake’s idea, that. He was always over-the-top with his schemes, but she had to admit that he had a point. She was safer if she was dead. So Jenna Stannis ran afoul of a blockade, and Astra Stellaris was born. It was a hideous name. But she couldn’t think of anything better, and the forgers had already drawn up her new identity before she had time to consider. So Astra it was, and Astra she stayed. She had to admit, she was a little bit fond of the moniker. It made her sound like the sort of heroic space pilot that she’d watched in movies when she was a kid, the kind she’d always aspired to be.

Privately, she had no idea what to think. Some of it was easier to process than others. The newscasts never mentioned the _Liberator_ – what had happened to the ship? They also didn’t mention Cally, and who knows how many strays the others had picked up over the years since she and Blake had left. Maybe Cally and the _Liberator_ were safe, and had managed to get away. She clung to that image when the nights were at their darkest, her old friend standing triumphant on the flight deck, carrying on no matter what.

But there had been no sign of Cally and the _Liberator_ either way, not on the underground or the official news. Jenna didn’t know what to make of that.

As to the rest, she still didn’t know what had happened. Blake dead, apparently by Avon’s hand. Vila and three others with him, also dead, along with all of Blake’s base on Gauda Prime. Her first instinct was that the Federation were lying, and had gunned them all down as they were meeting. But she’d heard reports of Avon’s odd and erratic behaviour from some of the rebels he’d been in contact with, and she had to wonder. He’d always hated Blake, sort of. He’d often wanted him dead. Could Avon have actually done it?

More troubling was Vila, and the others. They had been with Avon the whole time, and Blake wouldn’t have killed them. So who did? Official reports said it was all the rebels, that the guards had just come in to clean up the bodies afterwards. She didn’t believe them, of course. But she did wonder.

Wondering caused many a sleepless night, though, so she threw herself back into her work. There was always a place for a smuggler, inside the rebellion and out. It wasn’t hubris to claim that she had a gift for it, and she found her services in high demand. Taking things past blockades, finding alternate routes around the Federation, it was all in a day’s work.

When she was behind the controls of a ship, she found herself melding into the craft. The ship was an extension of her body, its screens her eyes and ears, and her mind was focused on nothing but getting the job done. She could distract herself, commit herself one hundred percent to the jobs she took on, leaving only enough time to eat and sleep. Sometimes she stalled the ship, ran quiet as she devoured little packages of food in the hold or dozed off in the captain’s chair. Sometimes she was lucky, and there was a neutral space station or asteroid on her way that she could stop off at to refuel herself and her ship.

This was one of those stops. Just a quick landing to meet up with a contact, but she had come a little early and had time to kill. She’d decided, in the interim, to spend the precious few credits she had on some food more interesting than the protein packs that she kept in her cabin. The moon she was on was a run-down little port far from any civilised planets, of interest only to deep-space haulage ships, criminals like her, and desperate refugees from the inner worlds. And it was short on Feds, which was a plus in her book.

She was wandering down to the pubs and fast-food places, ready to get a decent meal inside her for once, when she saw him. Not too far away, a small, sandy-haired man was slumped against the side of a building. One of his hands rested on his abdomen, the rough pad of his thumb idly stroking a patch of his stomach back and forth. The other was curled around a half-empty bottle of something green and nasty-looking, protectively cradling it close to his prone body. His eyes were closed, his expression impassive.

The man wasn’t much to look at – at least, nobody else in the port seemed to think so. Despite how long he had been sitting there, few had regarded him enough to even give him a passing glance. Not that he was dressed to stand out. He wore a faded grey jacket over trousers of the same colour, almost blending into the concrete wall behind him. His face was streaked with dirt beneath his scraggly beard, his skin pale and pasty, dark circles under his eyes. The few people that wandered by probably thought he was asleep, passed out drunk from the night before. But not Jenna. Jenna knew that look, just as much as she knew the man beneath it. She’d seen it far too many times on the flight deck of the _Liberator_ , lifetimes ago and worlds away. She knew when Vila Restal was pretending to be asleep so that nobody would bother him.

He had dyed his hair, grown his facial hair out, and lost a few pounds, but it was definitely him. She would know, she had lived with him for long enough. Something about seeing him there made her heart skip a beat, before plunging into the pit of her stomach. He was alive. Looking like hell, but alive. So there was a chance the others were too, despite what the Feds claimed. What had happened to him? She didn’t know. But there was only one way to find out.

“Vila?”

Her voice was thin in the afternoon air. She wrapped her arms around herself as she approached, still keeping an uncertain pace between them. The man lying on the ground looked up at her, his soft brown eyes bleary. It was him, she’d bet her life on it.

“Jenna?” the man said, and Jenna smirked.

“Actually, it’s Astra now,” she said. “Astra Stellaris. Not exactly an inspired name for a space pilot, but I’ve never been overburdened with creativity.”

The man gave her a grim smile that didn’t reach his eyes and extended his hand. “Kel Vastan,” he said. His expression was thin and humourless, more Avon than Vila. She shook her head slightly to expel that thought, and sat down beside him. He didn’t move, just gripped his bottle tighter. Now that she was close enough to smell it, she could definitely identify what he was drinking. Adrenaline and soma. Vila’s poison, in more ways than one.

“Well, ‘Kel Vastan’,” said Jenna. “I was wondering if you could tell me. You see, you look like a man I once knew. Vila Restal. Do you know what happened to him?” She was trying to be playful, just as she had been with Vila before. She remembered their banter, all of their banter. Maybe he’d respond to that, even if he didn’t respond to her.

The man looked down at his feet. His face was expressionless, closed-off, and his voice was flat. “Vila Restal died, didn’t you hear? On Gauda Prime with the rest of the rebels.”

“The Vila I know wouldn’t have let that happen.” Her voice shook slightly as she said it. She didn’t quite know what he meant, although she’d be lying if she were to claim absolute ignorance. That and the way he looked…it was clear that something was horribly, deathly wrong, and she would be remiss if she didn’t at least try to get through to him.

“Well,” he said. “That was a long time ago.”

His voice wasn’t right. He didn’t sound like Vila, not in the slightest. It was lifeless and devoid of expression, his words short and laconic; far from the chatterer that she had first met in the transit cell, all those years ago. For a second, she thought that she had got the wrong person, but he had reacted when she said his name. And he’d known hers. That was something.

She shifted next to him, her hand falling to the floor next to his leg. He didn’t react, just kept staring into the middle distance away from her.

Playing along seemed like the best way to get answers, she decided. “How?” The single word came out choked and incredulous. Jenna didn’t think that she could add anything more.

“Shot,” the man said. “By the Federation.”

Jenna let out a breath. “So it was just propaganda. Avon and Blake didn’t kill each other.” She looked to him for confirmation, but he was still staring. His hand went to the bottle next to him – dark green liquid sloshed in it as he drank.

“No,” he said, eventually. “That much was true.”

Jenna stared at him for a second. “ _Why_?” she asked, her voice little more than a gasp.

The man just shrugged. “Paranoia. Both of them, they were paranoid. They made mistakes. Vila saw it, couldn’t say anything. Not to Avon. Too late to stop it, then the troopers came in to mop up the rest.”

“And you? How did you get out?” Jenna’s mind was reeling. To hear it on the newscasts was one thing. To have it confirmed by someone who was there was quite another. She didn’t know how she thought of him talking about himself in the third person – for now, she was preoccupied with other things.

“I got shot. Crawled away. If they noticed the difference in the body count, they didn’t want to publish it. Weaselled my way onto a ship, started running.” He took another swig from the bottle. “Didn’t stop.”

“Vila-”

“ _Kel_.” The insistence in his voice was tinged with desperation. He had turned her head to look directly at her as he interrupted – as if realising his mistake, he glanced away. “I told you. He’s dead.”

“Kel, then.” Jenna licked her lips, hesitant to ask the question that was at the front of her mind. “What about Cally?” she said, not sure she wanted to hear the answer. “She wasn’t on the newscasts.”

“Died.” His response was as swift as it was monotone. “When they lost the _Liberator_. Vila couldn’t save her. None of them could.”

Something came over her then; anger, perhaps, a fury that she hadn’t felt in a long while, that she had been suppressing for three months.

She grabbed the front of his shirt and snarl out her words, paying no mind to flash of fear in the man’s eyes. “Damn it, Vila, I know it’s you!” Her voice was low and guttural, alien even to her ears. “Stop pretending you’re someone else, there’s no point running away from it!” She dropped him then, moisture springing up in her eyes unbidden.

The man just lay where he had been dropped. “No,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I told you. Vila is dead. There’s just me, now.”

 Silence fell over them. The man curled his feet underneath him and continued to stare ahead of him, occasionally taking swigs from his bottle. Jenna looked at him without quite seeing him, her thoughts scattered in the tornado blowing in her mind.

It had been years since she’d seen him last. At the end of the battle, among the other faces that she would, she realised, never see again. He had looked a decade younger then, a smile never far from his face. Now there was a shadow over him, something that she hadn’t seen. Something that was, apparently, worse than she could imagine.

She’d been through hell since they left the _Liberator_. Fighting, struggling, attacking at the Federation wherever they could and barely making it out alive. She’d seen good people die and wicked people prosper, blood and battle and bodies in the streets, but it seemed like a walk in the park next to the cloud that hung over him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It was barely more than a whisper. The words surprised her even as she said them.

Beside her, the man turned his head to look at her again. His sunken eyes registered a moment of shock, fading as he shuffled backwards slightly. She raised her hand, touching him lightly on the shoulder; he flinched away as though she had raised a fist. Jenna withdrew the hand, her eye line falling to the floor.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” she said. “I guess it’s been longer than I thought.”

The man nodded, his eyes watery and hollow. It was the eyes that Jenna was staring at. They were the part of him that looked the most like Vila – and the part that seemed the most scared.

“Just go,” he said. “You’re wasting your time if you’re looking for your friend here.”

Jenna shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”

“But I do.” He looked away, down the alley to his right. “It’s too dangerous for both of us.”

There was a moment of silence again, punctuated only by the sharp clattering of the occasional pair of shoes as someone walked by. The man was trying his best to ignore her; ignore everything that was surrounding him. She stood, pushing herself from the hard concrete floor. There was dust on her trousers, the distinct smell of adrenaline and soma hanging in a cloud around her.

“We’re both dead,” she said, and she wasn’t quite sure what she meant. “There’s no danger, not anymore. That time has passed.”

“There’s always danger.” The man was staring at his bottle, only a quarter full now. “Vila didn’t let himself see it until too late. Don’t do what he did.” There was a bitter note to his voice, slurred and mumbling through he was.

“Then there’s always safety in numbers.” Jenna stood in front of him, scrutinising his reaction. He blinked up at her, her face the picture of confusion.

“Don’t understand.”

“I think you do,” she said. “Come with me. A smuggler can always use a good thief in her corner. And there’s none better than you.”

The man started to shake his head. “I told you, I’m not - ”

“I heard you.” Her voice was firm, her expression hard. “And I know who you are. What was your plan, ‘Kel’?” She almost spat the name at him. Taking a breath, she stepped away, trying to control her emotions. “Run and hide? Wait in some little bolt-hole until they find you? You’re safer on the move, you know that, but there’s no way you have the credits to keep moving. I’m offering you a seat next to the best space pilot in this sector, who knows her way around all the Federation traps. A way out. A _new life_.” For the sake of the scared young man she’d met in the transit cell, she almost said, but bit her lip. For the years on the _Liberator_ and the jokes they’d shared. For all they’d seen together and apart.

All she could say had been said – it was at his feet now, a decision that could drag him out of the dirt and street corners of the Federation’s back alleys. “What do you think?” she asked, and if there was a tremor to her voice she tried to suppress it. For her sake or his, she didn’t know.

The man looked down at his feet. She could almost see the cogs turning in his mind; strange, really. Years ago she would have laughed at the idea of him thinking things through, if only to tease him. Now it was the choice between what could be life or death for him, and he was just looking at the ground.

He closed his eyes. She would have given anything to be able to see what he was thinking. His lips moved silently – talking to himself, no doubt. Part of her was screaming at him to make a decision already, but she kept that in her head. No need to startle him or scare him off. All she could do was wait.

And, after a long moment’s consideration, Vila Restal got to his feet. For the first time, his smile reached his eyes.

“I think, Astra Stellaris,” he said. “That it would be an honour to fly with you.”

They both stepped forward at the same time, and looking back later, Jenna wasn’t sure who initiated the hug. He seemed to fall into her arms the same way that she sank into his; his head on her shoulder, her arms on his back, two people sharing each other’s warmth under the planet’s red glare.

When they drew away, there were tears in Vila’s eyes and a wet patch on Jenna’s jacket. She ted to ignore it for the moment. Her arm was still around his shoulders, and he was leaning heavily on her in an effort to stay standing. The three-quarter-empty bottle sat on the floor, forgotten.

Their first step away was hesitant and shaky, Vila’s foot slipping in his boot as he tried to maintain his balance. He winced, free hand flying to a rip in his shirt. Now she could see the slightly bloodstained tear, a glimpse of white bandage beneath it. She hauled him up onto her shoulder, and took another step.

Always keep moving, that was her watchword. Her steps may be heavier with Vila on her back, but his strength would grow, in time. They could heal, in time. There were words to be said and conversations to be had, but now she had a meeting to get to, and a ship to fly back out into the black. There was enough room in her little living quarters for two. The practicalities would sort themselves out; for now, there was work to be done, and they needed to do it.

And so Vila and Jenna walked away from that street together into the blinding light of the red planet, heading towards tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to do a chapter per series, plus one about Vila's youth and one showcasing my PGP headcanons - that Blake was just testing Tarrant and Jenna was alive. Vila being the only one to get out just makes sense to me, though obviously this is just a headcanon. I also wanted to explore Vila's Delta status a bit more, as well as his friendship with Gan and the aftermath on his psyche of City at the Edge of the World.
> 
> Half of the chapter titles are taken from song lyrics, and I feel obliged to explain them. 'Bury the dead where they're found' is from Sufjan Stevens' 'The Only Thing', a song primarily about grief (warning for suicide references if you look up the song). 'Not the one to talk things through' is from 'All of Me Wants All of You', another Sufjan Stevens song that is about an unhealthy relationship. 'All the living are dead/And the dead are all living' is from 'In Our Bedroom After The War' by Stars, and seemed quite apt for Jenna and Vila in their post-Gauda Prime states.
> 
> As to the other three, I couldn't pass up the pun on 'Liberated'. The first one's pretty self-explanatory; 'Slightly Exaggerated' calls back to Rumours of Death. I'll leave you to figure that one out.
> 
> Anyway, yeah, thank you very much for reading, and please leave feedback! Concrit is always welcome.


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